


by firelight

by polkadot



Category: Necromancer Chronicles - Amanda Downum
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, First Time, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadot/pseuds/polkadot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isyllt makes a discovery over a cup of jasmine tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by firelight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PhoenixFalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/gifts).



> Thank you to Tamasin for the beta. You are amazing. <3

It was long after sunset when Isyllt and Khelséa stumbled into her apartment, their shared investigation at last come to a grimly satisfactory end.

“I’ll make tea,” Khelséa said, moving into the little corner kitchen.

“Yours is the best tea,” Isyllt told her, sinking into a chair and closing her eyes. The bone-tired ache that often set in after the end of a long case was knocking at her door, sapping both physical and mental strength. Perhaps this time keeping her eyes closed would hold it at bay, although she didn’t feel sanguine about the prospect. “Sometimes I want to kiss you for it.”

Khelséa laughed, the teapot rattling. “If you liked women, I’d kiss you back.”

Isyllt frowned, feeling the furrow between her brows. It was true, she’d always been attracted to men, and her sole committed relationship had been with Kiril. Her bedfellows since had been a motley assortment, but all male. 

And yet the idea didn’t repel her. Rather the opposite, really. She wondered what it would be like to run her fingers over a woman’s soft skin, to kiss the swell of a woman’s breast, to tangle her fingers in a woman’s braids, to taste a woman’s wetness.

“Your tea,” Khelséa said, her black braids brushing against her coat as she leant over the table to hand Isyllt a cup of tea, the steam smelling of jasmine. “You don’t have food in the house, so I’ll have to go out and fetch some. You look half-starved, as usual.”

To someone who didn't know Khelséa well, her raised eyebrows and dry voice might have seemed harsh. Isyllt, however, knew the real concern that lurked behind them. In the years since Isyllt had been orphaned, there had been few enough in this world who had any great care for her. Khelséa Shar was one of them, however bluntly and sarcastically she might show it, and Isyllt felt her less physical aches beginning to slide away.

“I’m not hungry,” Isyllt said automatically, curling her fingers around the warm curve of the teacup. It was an old argument, its well-worn lines almost comforting.

Not 'a woman' after all, Isyllt thought, and caught her breath at the suddenness of it. _Khelsea_.

“Nonsense,” Khelséa said, brusquely. “Everyone needs to eat. Particularly after a day like this.” Her mouth curved up in sudden amusement. “I’d be almost hungry enough to eat you, if there wasn’t too little meat on your body to make it worth my while.”

Despite her words, however, she leaned back in her chair, showing no inclination to go out. The lines of her body underneath her orange coat looked almost as limp as Isyllt’s own, and Isyllt felt a rush of kinship. They sat quietly with their tea for a few minutes, enjoying the warmth of the fire and letting the safety of the room impress itself once again on their restless nerves.

It was a tableau Isyllt had seen many times before, if never with as much clarity as now. So often they had faced danger together, Khelséa’s broad back against Isyllt’s bony one, and come through bruised yet whole. So often they had sat here, drinking tea by firelight and arguing about stupid plans, reckless behaviour, Isyllt’s haphazard eating habits, anything and everything. 

Had she truly never thought of anything more than friendship? 

She could hardly keep from staring, as the flames played over Khelséa’s face. Her friend could be walled off at times, half-hidden behind easy competence and bluff charm; other times Isyllt had crouched beside her in a dark alley, or caught sight of her in the moments after a befouled corpse was discovered.

Seldom, however, had she seen her this unguarded. The firelight made her cheekbones more prominent, while softening her other features, and the exhaustion that lay tangible on her shoulders was absent from her face, her brow almost peaceful. She seemed to have laid down her armour entirely, here by the fireside, and Isyllt’s fingers suddenly longed to trace those full lips. She had pressed clean cloth to a wound on Khelséa’s cheek not six months before, in an hour much like this one – now she wanted to press her mouth to its scar.

The suddenness of her feelings surprised her, but they didn’t alarm her. She knew she wasn’t in love with Khelséa, nor Khelséa with her. But friendships did ripen, and after a day like today – after a day like the ones they shared far too often – it was perhaps entirely natural that theirs should, that she should feel a longing for Khelséa’s embrace. The Selafaïns had called the night the hour of comfort...

“Is there a reason you keep staring at me?” Khelséa asked, with a quirk of her eyebrow. "I'm far too comfortable to bother vanishing if you look away."

Perhaps opening herself to a new experience would drive the ache away for a few hours, ridding her of the exhaustion and loneliness that had been her bedfellows on so many of these long nights. It wouldn’t be the first time she had found comfort in the arms of a friend, even if the friends had to this point been male.

And Khelséa meant more to her than any of those other friends ever had. 

“I was wondering,” Isyllt said, her mouth feeling funny, “if you might like to help me test that. Whether I like women, I mean.”

Khelséa studied her, her dark face alight with amusement. Her guard was still down, and Isyllt felt a thrill at the trust implied, that Khelséa left her armour off for her. “You don’t, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Isyllt said, slowly, breathing in the steam from her tea. “But I’d like to find out.”

That wasn’t quite what she meant. If any other woman had been sitting in that chair, Isyllt would have found her some food and stumbled off to bed alone, to seek oblivion in the darkness. If any other woman had been sitting in that chair, Isyllt’s pulse wouldn’t have been racing, her fingers resisting the urge to drum on the arm of her chair, her mind whirling with new possibilities. She didn’t want just any woman, she wanted _Khelséa_.

Khelséa was watching her, perhaps seeing her thoughts skitter below her skin, and Isyllt steeled herself to meet her eyes. She knew she wasn’t a pretty, plump, laughing woman, like Khelséa’s past girlfriends. Her mission in Symir would have put an end to that, even if she’d been that woman to begin with, which she hadn’t. A pale, gaunt necromancer who routinely put her body in the way of danger – and had the destroyed, corpse-white hand to prove it – wasn’t likely to speed anyone’s heartbeat.

And yet Khelséa’s mouth had softened, and her eyes sparked in the fire’s glow. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Isyllt said. She was, suddenly. On a night like this, with loneliness battering at the windows and exhaustion creeping into her body, the longing to banish both was no surprise. She would trust Khelséa at her back, always, and to bring her into her bed now seemed like an adventure she had been yearning for without knowing it for some time. It was that simple, in the end.

Khelséa set her empty teacup down on the table with precision. “Come and kiss me then.”

It was a challenge, and Isyllt treated it as such. 

Khelséa’s lips were warm under hers, and she tasted faintly of the jasmine tea they had both been drinking. Kneeling between Khelséa’s legs, Isyllt pressed up into the kiss with all of her new surety, slipping her undamaged hand behind Khelséa’s neck to pull her closer. When Khelséa shifted her weight in the chair to put her hands on Isyllt’s shoulders, Isyllt gentled the kiss, turning it from a fierce declaration of intent into a warm caress.

“Easy there, tiger,” Khelséa said, and when Isyllt met her eyes, they had crinkled at the corners. “We have all night.”

They did, Isyllt thought, as Khelséa cupped her face in her hands and kissed her, sure and easy. What had just a few minutes ago seemed like a dreary end to an exhausting day was now bright with the lively promise of discovery. 

She smiled into the kiss, for the first time all day, and drew Khelséa closer.

~*~


End file.
